Ingraham by Jeffrey Stephenson

From idea to reality

Just as with my other projects, there were no official plans other than an image that was stuck in my head. I sometimes scratch stuff down only to help with material ordering. I like to improvise as I work and I feel that investing heavily in a big planning phase hurts my process. I plan to change the plans therefore I have no plans. I DO NOT recommend this behaviour because it can have some serious drawbacks. Having said that, improvisation can provide some serious personal rewards.

The project started with the finned front grill because almost everything else revolved around it. I decided to go with the large 37-piece bulky structure for two reasons. First, I wanted deep fins. I wanted the design to have the depth that a thin, surface-mounted front fascia wasn’t going to give me.

Second, I wanted to control the integrity and the strength of the structure from side to side. Each fin is a single piece of wood running continuously from one side to the other. The grill looks to be a wrap-around design when in fact it is just the tip of an underlying iceberg.

The fun part of building the grill was creating the vent holes. Instead of removing material to make a round hole, I selectively left material out of the structure during the construction. The aluminium case needed a frontal lobotomy to accommodate the placement of the large grill structure. The Silverstone’s design really helped out here because there isn’t anything behind the upper portion of the front face. I used a Dremel rotary tool to cut out this section of the case.